


never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night

by houselannister



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Incest, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 06:47:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1595507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houselannister/pseuds/houselannister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tywin Lannister gives his children a job: travel up to Denver to deliver a message. But things are not as smooth as they might expect them to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night

**Author's Note:**

> This was a proper fucking bitch. Some heavy stuff happened while this baby was getting written, hence why it took so long to finish. I like to think it's an exorcism, some shameless happy times to balance some real life shit that made it hard to look on the bright side. Needed disclaimer: in the fic there's some classism, your very typical "Why are you wearing plaid" middle-class point of view; also, small mentions of animal cruelty, if you want to call it that, though it's very very light. And some fluff so sweet it'll give you a bad tooth.
> 
> As always, a huge thank you to Ashley for being a wonderful beta and, for lack of a better term, my fucking soulmate.
> 
> Enjoy! xx

I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.

**\- Jack Kerouac, On the Road**

 

****  
  


Their father's office was unlike any others Jaime Lannister had ever set foot in. Downtown Los Angeles was a jam of tall buildings and steel mixed with hard concrete, a lonely multi-headed monster surrounded by flatness. Yet Tywin Lannister had managed a way to seem taller than everyone and everything else. As Jaime looked down from the tall glass windows, he couldn't help but notice the tickling in the ends of his fingers; Los Angeles lay at his feet, a blur of politics and economy and rushed steps on crowded sidewalks. Tywin didn't care for the view; it was hardly breathtaking. What Jaime knew mattered most to his father was a much bigger concept, the idea of showing superiority. In that, Tywin Lannister had no equals; far from caring about the aesthetics of it all, Tywin was a stern man with stern ideas and an even sterner fist. Tywin's friends and foes alike knew better than to cross him. His own family knew better than to cross him too.

"How long have you been waiting?"

"Enough to know the exact number of windows in that building over there. Do you want to know?"

"No."

In Tywin's presence it was hard to be anything but the child he once was. Jaime unbuttoned his jacket and sat down, unflinching at the lack of apology for the long wait. In thirty-six years, he had never seen his father apologize for anything to anyone. When he was young he would often pin it up to the fact that Tywin was hardly ever in the wrong; growing up, however, he had learned that his father's pride prevented him from feeling sorry at all. It wasn't merely that he couldn't say the words: he was blind to the possibility. He waited for his father to settle behind the desk, watched as he opened the first drawer looking for something that wasn't there. In the silence, he chanced a look around, only to be quickly brought back to heel by Tywin's voice once more.

"I have a job for you," he was saying. He licked his thumb and opened a folder Jaime had not seen on the desk. His father turned the pages, one after the other. Then he stopped and took out a sheet of paper from the folder; he squinted, looked at it and nodded to himself.

"Care to elaborate?"

The capacity of Jaime's employ at his father's company was thoroughly fictitious. He didn't care for his father's business. Of the many ironic instances in their lives, the most hilarious was surely that both his sister and his younger brother cared more than he did, yet Tywin would not allow them anywhere near any position of relevance. While he, Jaime, was given everything they wanted and sat on it, unsatisfied and frustrated. If he could have given it all to Cersei and Tyrion he would have, if only to get rid of the responsibility for himself.

"I need you to deliver something to someone," Tywin explained, conjuring up a yellow envelope from a stack of documents nearby. He slipped that same paper into the envelope and sealed it. "Roose Bolton," he added then, picking up a pen and scribbling something illegible on the back.

It was somewhat weird but not completely unexpected. Weird because Roose Bolton had been Eddard Stark's lackey ever since Jaime could remember; living as he had for as long as he had, there were things Jaime had learned, family history he had memorized. The Martell family had beef with the Tyrells, the Baratheons with the Targaryens, the Greyjoys with the Starks. No one seemed to have specific issues with the Lannisters, but everyone seemed to agree on their status of arrogant, yellow-haired cunts.

_Down to a T._

Overall, one couldn't go as far as to say the business relationship between Tywin's company and the late Rickard Stark's had ever been anything but strained, and after Rickard's passing the son had certainly not pursued any improvement on that front. Much like a boxing match, Tywin in his corner and Eddard in his, the two had seemed wary to meet in the middle of the ring. Jaime would have wagered his father meant to live his life ignoring the existence of the Stark business for as long as he could.

Admittedly, the equation had changed recently, with Eddard Stark's untimely death barely months before. The son, too young and inexperienced, led a company he knew little of, steered by the subtle political mastermind of Roose Bolton, a man as shrewd as reputation made him out to be. Hence why it wasn't a surprise that Tywin would reach out to him; his father had a habit to mingle with the sort of men who would sell a child to get his way, and Roose was no exception. Jaime wondered if Robb Stark knew anything about Tywin and Roose's correspondance, but knew enough to answer his own questions.

"What is our business with Bolton?" he asked all the same.

Without as much as a glance, Tywin ignored him. Jaime wished he could tell his father had a flair for dramatics, but the truth would be different: he just didn't trust them with delicate matters. Or... any matter, actually. Tyrion was a dwarf, Cersei was a woman, and Jaime was... Jaime. Stubborn, quick-tempered, vain Jaime Lannister. He smirked.

"Alright," he conceded; he didn't care. "Why don't you ask your lapdog to do this for you?" _Gregor Clegane_ , the name made him wince without the need to say it out loud. "I am not a delivery boy, Father." He finished with that trademark flash of pearly white teeth and a shrug that was meant to shake away all the responsibilities off his shoulders.

"Well what are you?" Tywin's response caught him off guard. His father was hardly one to shy away from berating people, but Jaime was usually not on the receiving end of those matches; sure he had suffered a few blows, especially when he was younger, but it was nothing compared to what his siblings had had to deal with - or worse, his father's associates. Tywin wasn't done. "It is past time you took on some of your responsibilities towards the very legacy you sit upon. This," he said, lifting the folder he'd been going on about, "is not merely a delivery. This is not something for a lapdog. This may very well be a stepping stone for everything we will hold in the near future."

Jaime might have told him then, that he had tried to be what his father wanted him to be. He hadn't meant to accept Aerys Targaryen's job offer back when he was twenty-four and fresh out of school, but he had because he had thought Cersei would marry Rhaegar and that would have kept him closer to her. He hadn't meant to be used as a political pawn by the mad Targaryen, only to see Cersei and Rhaegar's engagement fall through, but it had been too late then. When he had tried to quit, Aerys Targaryen had laughed in his face. He hadn't meant to pull the trigger when Aerys had told him, late at night, that he meant to fix the city's water supply with chemical agents because "the people looked at him funny". He hadn't meant to force Tywin to reach out to the new Baratheon mayor to get him, Jaime, out of that sticky situation. (And what good had come out of that? The brute had asked for Cersei in return, and he had had her. In hindsight, Jaime would have rather gone to prison than to stand the thought of Robert Baratheon pounding his sister gracelessly.)

"When do I have to go?"

"I need the files to be on Bolton's desk by tomorrow, lunch time." Tywin shuffled with the countless sheets of paper on his desk, rearranging them according to some mental order known only to him. "It's a fifteen hours journey so I'd wager, if you leave sometime in the next hour, you ought to be in Utah by nightfall. You can rest there, I'll arrange a place for you to stay in Richfield. You'll proceed to Colorado in the morning."

"Or I could just take a plane."

"The less people know about this, the better," Tywin pointed out, in a tone that would have sounded conclusive even to deaf ears. "You'll drive."

Far from accepting defeat, Jaime Lannister knew when to let go of a bone, if only when it came to his father. All his objection had been met by firm and logical explanations; all he had left was a petty I don't really want to go, but he knew better than to say that out loud. He nodded and stood up, buttoning his jacket out of habit - he'd picked up on that when he was eight and watching his father's movements closely, like every child did. Tywin held the folder up and Jaime snatched it, none too enthusiastic about the whole matter but unable to say anything that would get him out of it.

"Do me a favour," Tywin added just as Jaime turned to leave. _I’m not going to like this._ “Bring Cersei with you. She refuses to let go of the Joffrey issue, and I don’t think I can bear another hour long phone call of apologizing for her son’s inexcusable behaviour.”

Last Jaime had heard from his sister, Robert Baratheon’s death had taken a toll on the eldest of Cersei’s children; Joffrey had always been a little prick, for as long as Jaime could remember, but his _father’s_ death had opened Pandora’s box and the boy was now being a proper nightmare. Picking up fights in bars and mistreating young women, abusing the house staff of Cersei’s mansion; Cersei even mentioned once that he went as far as to threaten to hit her, and Jaime had not responded well to that. It had taken all of Cersei’s persuasion to hold him back then, or Jaime knew he would have knocked a tooth or two out of the brat’s mouth without a second’s hesitation. Tywin had decided to send the boy to boarding school (“Switzerland, probably, maybe Germany”), but Cersei wasn’t going down without a fight. Bully or not, Joffrey was her son, and she seemed to be bending backward to make up excuses for him.

Jaime laughed. “Alright.” They shared a look, father and son, and for the first time in years Jaime felt a camaraderie between them. He blinked, and it was gone.

* * *

 

He had been five years old when his father had asked him if he ever wanted to marry; he wasn’t sure what had brought about the question, nor did he remember the question per se (Cersei had informed him, much later, of many answers he had given when he was a child, that he had completely forgotten). His answer, that one time, had been uncomfortable, and Tywin had never asked him again; according to his sister, he had answered “Yes, I will marry Cersei,” and smiled the biggest smile. His sister always had the strongest memory of the two of them: on its reliability, he had more than a few doubts. Still it was better than the crippling nothingness that looked back at him whenever he tried to remember small things from his past.

As he drove silently down the I-15, Jaime knew what he and Cersei had was nothing short of a marriage of sorts. They missed the papers and the signatures, and they had never had a ministry declare them husband and wife before a cheering crowd - that had been Robert’s privilege. But what Jaime had was bigger than anything Robert could ever have dreamed of: while he claimed Cersei’s ring finger, Jaime claimed everything else. The late Robert Baratheon had a trophy, a seal of needed alliance. Jaime had a sister, and then some.

“I shouldn’t have agreed to this,” Cersei said, looking out the window. Her leg bounced up and down incessantly; Jaime had to fight the urge to slap her knee to make her stop.. “What will people think? My husband just died, and here I am, leaving town without a notice.”

Jaime rolled his eyes and gripped the steering wheel tighter; he groaned as his sister kept rambling on about the many matters that required her immediate attention in Los Angeles, and just how inappropriate it was for her to leave town in the wake of her husband’s recent death; she mentioned the word _inappropriate_ three times in the same sentence. “Cersei, it’s been one month and no one cares anymore.”

“Well, what would you know,” she retorted, sitting in the passenger seat in her pristine, white dress. She had been asleep when he’d knocked on her door, and one of the maids had answered informing him it was just _too early_. He’d pushed past the old woman and barged in all the same, drawing the curtains and simply telling his sister they were leaving in half an hour.

“I know because I live in this city just as you do, and people don’t care as much as you think they do,” he said, lifting both eyebrows to stress the point. Far from forgetting all about the suspicious death of Mayor Baratheon, it was true that people were already looking to the new prospects; Robert’s brothers were already squabbling, and people seemed way more intrigued by that than whatever Cersei Lannister was doing or not doing.

“I shouldn’t have left Joffrey.”

“Oh, fuck Joffrey.”

If he had known, back then, the result would be so annoying, Jaime would have worn a condom. Hell, he would have worn two to be sure Joffrey was never born. The child had been more of a hindrance than anything else, and even though he had never had to spare a second thought for the boy (he was _Robert’s_ , and that was _it_ ) he still managed to be a nuisance to him from a distance. Jaime was not a doting uncle - that was Tyrion’s prerogative, and not one he performed with Joffrey; Cersei was the problem. Cersei’s obsessive concern over the boy’s safety and her insane smothering. Jaime had tried and told her once, that she would do the boy more harm than good if she kept that up, and he shivered at the recollection of his sister’s yelling after his suggestion.

With his eyes fixed on the road, he couldn’t see his sister’s face, but he could sense her annoyance at what he’d said. He looked on stubbornly, refusing to give her a green light to start a scene. The traffic was manageable as he entered the highway at last, leaving Downtown Los Angeles behind them, and the sun shone bright on the roofs of the cars speeding up before them. Jaime sighed and shifted in his seat, moving his left feet to prevent it from cramping. All the while, he could feel Cersei’s stare on him, and the anger along with it.

“What,” he said at last, glancing in the rearview mirror before surpassing the column of vehicles before him, taking the fast lane.

“Your utter lack of care is intolerable.”

“What do you want me to say?” His tone softened, losing the hostility altogether in an attempt at keeping a truce on the uneasy subject. “Look, your son will be fine. Father is there.”

There was a frown on her face, he saw it in her reflection in the front window. If it was for his dismissal or for _your son_ , he didn’t know.

“That’s exactly what I’m concerned about.” Her rebuttal was dry and Jaime knew better than to ask more on the subject. He knew all about Cersei’s fear, and Tywin’s opinions on the matter; he’d heard it all a thousand times over, from one or the other, and everyone else as well for good measure. A college in Switzerland, far, far away from Los Angeles, and far, far away from Cersei. It seemed no matter where he turned, people seemed to agree in seeing Cersei as the cause behind Joffrey’s flaws. Jaime himself disagreed; Joffrey was a nightmare with or without Cersei. Surely Cersei’s validation had offered him a skirt to hide behind, but you can’t turn a square into a circle.

The car sped up along the highway, surpassing car after car, and a few trucks, before the traffic began slowing down. Jaime groaned and fell into the slow-paced line. He had never much cared for silence, though. And he liked to push Cersei’s buttons, if anything because the reaction, vivid and loud as it was bound to be, was a spectacle to behold, like a hurricane waging destruction on its path. And Jaime Lannister had always been an estimateur of natural disasters.

“Face the truth, sister,” he said, allowing himself a playful smirk. “You can try. You can protect him. You can apologize for him all you want, but that doesn’t change reality. He’s an asshole.”

“Just like his father, apparently,” she murmured, shifting in the seat so that her body was facing away from him.

He scoffed, shaking his head and stealing a glance at last, brief and fleeting before his eyes returned on the road. He wanted to retort that he was not by all means the boy’s father, Robert was. That Robert had been the one she had let hold the boy when he was born, and Robert had been the one with too heavy a hand whenever Joffrey would throw a tantrum. Jaime wondered if things would have been different if he had cared enough for the baby (and the two that came after), if maybe the outcome might have been a better one. He almost laughed at himself. He had never been able to hold his sister and younger brother back, what gave him the right and the entitlement to think he might have succeeded with Joffrey?

The column of cars beside them halted, and soon enough so did theirs. Jaime tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, looking at the people in the vehicle that had halted right beside them: a man, speaking vehemently into his phone, and a child sitting silent in the passenger seat, drawing on a white piece of paper with a red crayola. The child looked up, as if sensing the disturbance, and when he met Jaime’s eyes he smiled, showing a wide gap where his front teeth should have been. Then he stuck out his tongue and ducked quickly out of sight. Jaime scowled.

He had never liked children anyway.

* * *

 

It wasn’t until twenty minutes later that a man appeared to be walking among the sea of stationary cars, wearing a bright yellow vest. He approached the cars, knocked on windows, spoke a few words and then moved on to the next. When he finally reached their car, he knocked on Cersei’s window. Jaime watched as his sister simply looked at the man with contempt, as if he was mad for believing she would roll down the window for a stranger. The man knocked again, incessantly; Jaime rolled down his window, and the other man got the message. He walked around the car and stopped at Jaime’s side, looking into the vehicle, looking at Cersei with a grimace, before finally turning to Jaime and saying his piece.

“There’s an accident ahead, sir,” he began, so casual one might think he was speaking of the weather. “Better get off the highway now, there’s an exit to Barstow. You may proceed from there and re-enter the I-15 in a few miles.”

With that, he was gone, not without a last scathing look to Cersei. Jaime watched his retreating back in the rearview mirror, watched as he knocked on every window, leaned in to give the news and then proceeded to tell the next driver, and the next, and the one after that. Slowly but surely the cars ahead all seemed to follow the man’s advice, and Jaime saw them all restart the engine and head to the exit. He did the same, falling in line once again as every vehicle took the turn and left the main road, each going in the direction that suited them the most. When it was his turn, he took a turn left. The streets were fairly empty, and the sun was still high in the sky. It was half past noon, and Jaime’s stomach was rumbling.

“God, this is a nightmare,” Cersei drawled.

“Oh, now you’re talking to me.”

“I’m bored, desperate times call for desperate measures.” Neither of them seemed too engrossed in the scenery as they drove by vast green fields and little suburbans conglomerates; Cersei clicked her tongue against her teeth unnervingly, Jaime sped up a little. “Let’s do something,” she murmured.

“I’m doing something. It’s called driving.”

“Well let’s… play a game.” Jaime narrowed his eyes, opened his mouth to object, but Cersei continued. “I say a word, and you reply with the first thing that comes to your mind. You can drive and do that at the same time, it’s not that difficult.”

“You’re 35 years old.”

“So.”

God.

“Alright.” Jaime sighed. “But I know how games end with you. I’ll do something, or say something, and you’ll get mad, call me names and not talk to me for another twenty minutes until you decide you’re bored again.”

He glanced at her and saw the smug smirk on her face. She knew. He heard the clasp of her purse clicking, then some rummaging and a final contented yelp. Then another click, and when the familiar stink of nicotine reached his nostrils he grimaced and rolled down her window for her pushing the tiny button on the dashboard.

Cersei hummed. “Okay then. Sister.”

“Annoying.”

“Are we playing or are we fighting?”

Jaime chuckled and nodded his head in acknowledgement. “Start over.”

“Sister.”

“Car.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, because you’re my sister and we’re in a car? You said I had to say the first thing that popped in my mind!” The corners of his mouth felt numb from smiling. “I’m not good at these games, Cers.”

“Smoke?”

“Cancer,” he said, eyeing the stick hanging from her fingers.

“Milk?”

“Breasts,” he said, lifting an eyebrow. His sister slapped him across the chest. Jaime took one hand off the wheel and grabbed her wrist, pushing her hand away. She called him a jerk and he laughed again.

“Poppies?” They were driving past another green field now, with hints of red here and there.

“Mum.”

That silenced her. She took a drag and flicked the ashes into the ashtray. He could feel her eyes piercing through the side of his face, and even though he couldn’t see her, he knew she would be surprised.

“You remember that?” Cersei asked.

“It’s one of the few things I do remember.” He stretched his arm out to her, motioning for her to pass the cigarette. She did and he took a drag, tasting of her her nude lipstick on it. Then he gave it back. “I remember coming home from school with the nanny, what was her name? Sally? Stella? Well, I remember walking into the hall and there would be this huge vase filled with red poppies. The smell was everywhere, every corner of every room smelled of poppies. And yet there was just that one bunch in the whole place. It was always red poppies. Never a rose, never a lily. Just...red poppies.”

“Yeah, she loved those.” Cersei paused and threw the cigarette outside the window. “Do you think she had someone buy them, or dad got them for her every day?” Jaime could hear the romanticized melancholy in his sister’s voice, and it was out of character. Then again, he knew how much his sister liked to think of their parents as the greatest romance there ever was. Jaime himself wasn’t sure; he could not remember. But Cersei did.

“Father doesn’t strike me as the type of man who would buy flowers every day, no matter who for.”

Cersei did not reply to that, and when he looked at her she was staring out the window, lost in God knows what memory long lost to him, of their mother and father in another time, in another life. He decided to let her have that space, and smiled to himself because as she thought of them he thought of her, and how beautiful she looked right then and there, with the sunlight making her hair a deeper golden, and her lips a little brighter, and her eyes green lakes, greener than whatever field they may be driving by.

“Love.”

“What?”

“The game. Love.”

He didn’t have to think about it. “You.”

* * *

 

Cersei had grown tired of the game fairly soon. Perhaps it had been Jaime's uninspired answers, or maybe the tone he kept saying them in to make a point of his boredom. Some ten minutes later she had told him they didn't have to do it if he had to be such a pissbaby about it, scoffed and turned her back on him once again, indeed proving that what he had told her earlier was true: games always ended poorly with Cersei.

Silence had dragged on for another scarce few minutes until his sister had fallen asleep with her forehead against the glass and her shoulder sunk deep into the space between the seat and the car door. It didn't look comfortable, but Jaime was glad she wasn't nagging him. He had forgotten what a lousy travel partner his sister was. When they were young, she was _that child_ , the "Are we there yet" child. However, Cersei's silence allowed him to think of the task his father had given him: Roose Bolton, Robb Stark, Denver, it was all way too out of reach for Jaime, and he couldn't grasp but the basilar concept of it. And that seemed to be that Roose Bolton could be bought, and Robb Stark or anyone at the Stark company would know nothing of it. Jaime had to give credit to his father for knowing how to rattle his own coin purse; he himself would have never bet on Bolton's loyalty. Tywin had and he hit jackpot doing it.

Still, Jaime was at peace. The street ahead was empty - it was lunch time, and they were in the middle of a road that might have led to nowhere, and Jaime would have loved that. For a moment he forgot his destination, forgot about Denver and the Boltons. He drove. Drove fast going nowhere, drove fast and deluded himself into thinking he was running, and Cersei with him. He allowed himself to believe they had chosen to leave everything behind, and that their ride would take them to someplace different, happier.

The sun cast shadows ahead of them on its way to the sea - it was early, still a long way to go.

Cersei stirred.

“I have to pee,” she said, sleep still in her voice, eyes closed to fight the sunlight. She stretched her legs like a cat in the sun, before kicking away the shoes and lifting her feet onto the dashboard. The hem of her skirt inched up her thighs; it didn’t escape Jaime’s notice. “I’m thirsty. Can we stop somewhere? I’m hungry too.”

“Anything else?”

Cersei opened one eye, just one. “That’s it, for now.” There was a smile on her lips. A small smile, barely there, a twitch in the corner of her mouth when she thought he couldn’t see it. Her eyes studied their surroundings, alive and bright. “Where are we?”

Slowing down Jaime looked out the window, the absolute nothingness surrounding them, the vast expanse of rock and dry land. “We’re in Nevada. Have been for a while now.” Had he ever been out here on his own? Had he ever been allowed that much freedom, and more importantly, had she? He couldn’t help but think they had slipped past their gilded cages, managed to find a crack and end up here, in the middle of nowhere and with nowhere to hide because, at last, they didn’t have to.

Perhaps it was his subconscious that made him reach out for her, put his hand on her leg and just let it rest there with no malice or hidden meaning, as if touching their mirage in the desert would give it a stronger tinge of reality. She was warm and real, and everything she had always been, while Jaime was lulled into a sense of serenity, with the wheels whirring against the asphalt, and the sunlight warming his face filtering through the front window. She toyed with his fingertips, brushing her thumb against each one of them, thumb to little finger and back; she wasn’t even aware of her gestures, focused as she was on the desert around them when Jaime glanced at her once more.

“Gas station,” she whispered, nodding to some spot in the distance, where a shadow seemed to emerge from the emptiness of the desert.

Jaime blinked, and suddenly he was back in the harsh cold reality. They approached the station, slowing down to enter the area. He halted at a gas pump, killing the engine and turning to Cersei. “You have five minutes,” he said, lifting a finger. “Pee and get food and drinks. I gotta fill the tank anyway.” Cersei opened the door and kicked both legs out, and it looked as if she hadn’t heard a word he had said, or as if she had but was purposefully ignoring them. “If you’re not in the car in five minutes I’m leaving you here,” he added for good measure. She closed the door in his face, and Jaime watched as she walked away and into the station’s shop. “I’m so doing it this time,” he mumbled to himself, shaking his head as he got out of the car.

The air was warm, too warm for the suit he was wearing; he shrugged the jacket off his shoulders and threw it onto the backseat, then he rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, feeling a gentle breeze wipe away the stress of the ride so far. He pushed the hair off his eyes and looked around, nodding to the man who approached the pump and asked him if he needed help. He handed him fifty bucks and let him do his job, walking around the car and leaning back, eyes fixed on the door Cersei had just walked into. He couldn’t see her from there, so he wagered she’d be in the restroom; he waited, crossing his legs at his ankles, and his arms against his chest.

He watched as people walked in and out through that same door, men and women alike, parents holding their children’s hands, an old man leaning heavily on a cane. A young couple of girls lingered on the threshold, smoking the last of their cigarettes and sharing a laugh in their skinny jeans and colourful shirts tucked into the waistband. One of them eyed him and elbowed her friend. They chuckled again.

Cersei waltzed out of the shop holding a bag in one hand and a bottle in the other; she was sauntering toward him with what could only be described as an accomplished - victorious - expression. He pushed himself off the car hood and noticed the wandering eye of a man sitting in his car, waiting to get gas; he wondered if Cersei had noticed the two youngsters checking him out. He wished she had.

When she was within arm’s length and about to speak, Jaime cut her off, pressing his lips to hers; she was stiff, her eyes wide open, but caved in slowly - like ice left under the sun for too long. Had he kissed her at all since he’d woken her up that morning? Hardly, not with the house staff walking in and out of her room. It was so difficult to _kiss_ her.

He broke away and looked down at her, oozing arrogance and satisfaction that she was his and Dumb Joes could look as much as they want, but nothing more than that, never more than that. He wanted her to be free, but only as long as her freedom was inherently chained to him - it frightened him to think he was ready to exchange a prison for another to lock her in - to ease his mind, he told himself she would want to be chained to him.

“That was reckless,” she murmured, looking over her shoulder like she expected Tywin to be crouching behind one of the cars parked nearby, or one of his lackeys at least. Jaime knew his sister, however, and if she had truly been mad at him it would have showed. Instead, a soft blush seemed to creep up her cheeks, and she was quick to look away to hide it. That was when he realized it was the first time he’d kissed her in the daylight in months.

“Fuel’s done, mate,” came the annoyed voice behind him. “You gotta move it, people are waiting. Kiss the lady elsewhere.”

* * *

 

Somewhere along the road Jaime had decided he preferred the less trafficked streets, and had sped up past the highway instead of re-entering it. Cersei had murmured something about wasting time, but Jaime had merely shrugged her concerns away. _I like the scenery_ , he had said. Cersei had looked away, shaking her head in annoyance. She had not said more, and Jaime was grateful for that; of all of his sister’s flaws – and there were many of them – relentlessness was the most difficult to handle. Jaime was not a patient man, even less so when it came to Cersei’s petulance. He loved her alright, but that only made him less willing to accept her tirades; he usually grew tired of it fairly quickly, preferring another side of her than the one she was keen on offering. Cersei thought hostility to be the best weapon – and Jaime knew it was a mechanism of self-preservation as well as a means of self-indulgence; but he liked her best when her mouth was closed, or curved in a smile.

As they drove, their surroundings changed; the blinding brightness of the desert retreated slowly to make room for a more lively greenery. In the far distance the tops of the Fish Lake National Forest framed the horizon. The sun had begun its descent towards the back of them, casting shadows on the road before them rather than behind them.

“Utah,” he whispered to himself.

“I hate Utah.”

“Is there anything you don’t hate?”

“I know, life is so disappointing.”

She was smoking again. Jaime didn’t smoke regularly, but he had taken on the habit of snagging a drag whenever she lit one on. Poison for poison, he thought; he seemed keen on inhaling the same sort of toxicity she was so addicted to, like an illness he felt he should share, like a cancer he was willing to share. Every time he inhaled, he inhaled her, and it was a lightheadedness he welcomed as a sign of proximity. That time, however, he didn’t ask for it, nor did he take it of his own volition. His sister was engrossed in whatever was on the screen of her phone, typing fast; she barely looked away when he asked her what it was.

“Joffrey,” she said. “He’s not replying to my texts.”

“Well stop texting him, then.”

“But he seemed upset when I spoke to him.”

“When did you speak to him?”

“The gas station.”

Jaime sighed profoundly and gripped the steering wheel tighter. Cersei’s unhealthy obsession was unnerving, and it was even worse when he thought of how little Joffrey actually cared of Cersei’s attentions. He took her for granted, used her when he needed her and left without as much as a word after he’d gotten what he wanted. She may not realize it, but Jaime did: to Joffrey, Cersei was a green light for whatever vice or caprice rattled his cage. He knew, the little brat, that she would move Earth and seas to let him win in any given occasion, and he took advantage of it. Cersei’s mistake in all of this? She was as capricious as him, attached for her own gain and needs, selfish in her smothering and blind for too much love.

Was he jealous? Cersei had never been that unconditionally devoted to him, after all.

With a last exasperated guttural sound, Cersei brought the phone to her ear and waited. Jaime moved his eyes from the road to his sister and back to the road. When she spoke again it was in a sickly sweet voice that made him cringe.

“Darling?” she exclaimed after a few seconds. “Why weren’t you answering your phone? No I’m – Yes, I’m in Utah right now.” A pause followed, and Jaime grimaced, mimicking Cersei silently. His sister saw that and smacked his shoulder. “Well I wanted to know if you had calmed down,” she was saying now, lowering her voice. It was as if she was trying to keep Jaime out of the conversation. Was she ashamed of what her son reduced her to? Good, he thought stubbornly. She should be. “No I’m not – Joffrey, please don’t say that.”

From what little he could hear of the conversation, Joffrey had resumed his usual egotistical act.

“Joffrey? Joff?” she repeated at the device. Her tone was growing angrier with every passing second. Then, silence. Jaime saw her put the phone down in her lap with an irritated flick of her wrist, and she shook her head, murmuring to herself something that didn’t reach his ear.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing outside her window. She turned to look, and Jaime grabbed her phone. Her reaction was too slow, and he tossed it out his window without a second thought, hearing it thud against the concrete as he sped up. “Oops, I dropped it.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” If she had been angry at Joffrey, it was nothing compared to the venom dripping from her words now. He tried to ignore her, but she persisted. “Did mum drop you on your head when you were a baby?” She hit him then. A slap square across the chest, sorely lacking in playfulness. He kept one hand on the steering wheel while he tried to shield himself from the following blows; three more times she managed to hit him, blindly, careless of where she aimed so long as there was something to wound. “I had important things in that phone!” she yelled at last, when the physical violence was not enough.

“Oh, what, your hairstylist’s number?” he retorted, just as annoyed as her. “At least I won’t have to see you degrade yourself for the sake of that little dickhead. Not on my watch.” His sister was better than that; to see her reduced to a simpering mother was not something Jaime felt like he had to witness. After all, there was a reason he hadn’t wanted anything to do with Joffrey - and the two that had come after him. Motherhood did something to women that he did not find appealing.

“Fuck you!” she bellowed.

“No, fuck _you_!” he bounced back, pointing a finger at her.

“Jaime, watch out!”

It took a total of five seconds. He had taken his eyes off the road and had stopped paying attention. When he saw her eyes widening he turned to look ahead, but it was too late. All he saw was the black spot growing bigger until it was on them, on their windshield, hitting the glass with a loud splintering noise. The entire glass cracked like an ominous spiderweb, and Jaime steered all the way to the right. The tires were screeching on the asphalt, and their surroundings were spinning around them. His foot was well pressed on the brakes, but the car kept sliding off the side of the road, into the dry ground. It halted a few meters into the field, and the only noise around them was that of birds leaping off the tops of the trees, scared by the crash, and their own heavy breathing.

His immediate reaction was to stretch an arm to Cersei’s shoulder, gripping her tight.

“Are you okay?” he asked. His right arm was sore from the impact. Cersei was gripping the handle of the car door viciously, and her hair was tousled. When she didn’t reply at first, he shook her. “Are you fucking okay?”

“Don’t fucking touch me!” she yelled, shrugging his hand off her shoulder and pushing the door open. She stepped out of the car without another word and slammed it shut right behind her. He followed her with his eyes, watched as she walked around the car and towards the road. Quickly, Jaime killed the engine and followed her outside, leaving his own door open. As they returned on the road to inspect the damage, what they found was horrifying.

A deer, barely grown, lay in the middle of the road, empty in both directions. It wasn’t dead, but it wouldn’t live. The animal’s blood pooled around its head, a stain that grew larger with every passing second. Both of them stood petrified by the animal’s body, watching as it struggled in agony. It tried to move its head, flex the muscles in its long neck, but all his attempts were met with the hard resistance of its broken limbs. Cersei tilted its head and shook her head.

“It would be a mercy to kill it,”Jaime said, crouching down. The deer’s big eyes looked back up at him, lost and afraid, and Jaime felt a rush of sorrow.

“The beast almost killed _us_ ,” his sister replied, turning her back on both the animal and him, looking up and down the road. “What do we do? We are in the middle of nowhere, in Utah nonetheless!” From where he stood, still crouched down, he saw her kick a rock in those high heels of hers. He glanced up at the sky, turning a vivid shade of pink now that the sun had set, then down at the clock, which read a quarter to eight. It would get dark soon, and the car would not take them much further as it was.

“I’m gonna call for a tow truck,” he announced at last, reaching into his breast pocket.

“Yes, you do that,” she remarked bitterly. “I would, but I don’t have a phone anymore.” As she said that, she raised her voice gradually, emphasizing the end of the sentence until she was almost yelling at him. Even from a distance, he could see her glaring at him.

It took the deer one full hour to die, and Jaime never left its side as they waited for the tow truck to get there. It wasn’t sorrow anymore that kept him there, but rather curiosity to see the damned thing give in and die already. When it did, he brushed the dust off his pants and stood up, prodding the animal’s side with the point of his shoe.

“Well that was a stubborn thing,” he said at last, turning on his heels and leaving it there. It was not his job to clean the mess. Someone would take care of it.

* * *

 

Cersei sat stiff in the passenger seat, practically pressed against the door like she wanted to open it and jump out. Jaime, silent in his seat in the middle, between her and the driver; he would have laughed at her if he wasn’t sure that would earn him another scene. The truck drove slowly down Clear Creek Canyon Rd., creaking every time they took a turn to the point where Jaime felt compelled to look over his shoulder and make sure their car was still there. He had exchanged a few words with the man when he had arrived. Thankfully the car had not sustained any major damage beside the windshield, but it would be impossible to drive any further with the glass in those conditions. The man had offered to repair it in three days’ time, but Jaime had opened his wallet and three days had become _“tomorrow morning, 7am at best”_.

Around 9pm they reached Joseph, a town so small Jaime had to wonder if even God had forgotten about it. They entered the town on a small road with small one floor houses on both sides. Nothing fancy, not like the suburbs. The front yards had no green trees, nor flowers or bushes, just naked earth. He attempted a glance at his sister and the grimace on her face did not make him smile then, because he knew his face would not look that much different from hers. They took a turn left and the driver entered a driveway, just narrow enough to let the truck through. A larger junkyard opened up before them; there were cars scattered here and there in much worse conditions than theirs, but none near as fancy. When they pulled up, Cersei all but lept out of the vehicle, jumping down the the tall step and landing safely in steady feet. Jaime could hear her talking to herself.

“Tomorrow morning then?” he asked the man who still sat behind the wheel.

“Yes sir,” was the quick reply. He had a kind look in his eyes, and deserved none of Cersei’s contempt. But still, he was a far cry from the people his sister was used to hanging out with. Truth be told, he was not Jaime’s typical companion either, but he was better at hiding it. “There’s a place you can stay for the night, it’s barely two blocks away. Mind you, it’s not the Four Seasons,” he added, nodding his head poignantly in Cersei’s direction (thankfully she was too busy muttering curses under her breath to notice), “but I suppose for one night it will do. I know the owner. Tell them Joe sent you.”

Cersei spun on her heels and opened her mouth to make some remark, and Jaime knew by the looks of her it would not be gentle. So he grabbed her by the elbow before she could speak, thanked the man with a nod of his head, and led Cersei back to the road. Here, she pulled her arm free of his grasp and began walking faster, making sure to keep at least three paces ahead of him. Taking advantage of the fact that she would not look at him now - it would mean defeat - he chuckled and took in how out of place she looked, in her designer everything, surrounded by nothing but reality, a very different reality than the one she had grown up with. Nothing sparkled, and money could not really buy them things that weren’t there.

_Dorothy_ , he thought, _I’m afraid you’re not in Kansas anymore_.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He heard her and looked up to see the source of her dismay. The building was not unlike the rest he had seen on their way here: one floor, flat, white, but three times as big as the regular house, laid out in a semi-circle. In the middle, a parking lot where three lonely cars waited, each far from the other. He counted no more than twenty rooms, twenty doors that looked all the same. The white sign above them read “River Bed Motel” in red.

“What have I done to deserve this?” she asked no one.

“Do you really want an answer?” he chimed in. “Come on, it’s dark, better inside than outside.”

He put his hand on the small of her back and this time she didn’t flinch away; perhaps she knew it was better to have Jaime at her side, just in case. With a last look around they reached the _Entrance_ sign, and Jaime pushed the red door open. Inside was a counter, and behind it a man in his forties watching CNN on a small tv. When he heard the door he looked up and seemed even more uneasy than his sister was. Jaime couldn’t blame him; dressed as they were, and with Cersei’s excessive jewelry, they looked more than just barely out of place. Jaime eyed the small padded chairs against the wall and backed Cersei until her legs hit one of them.

“Stay here, let me do this,” he said patronizingly. Cersei was about to object, but he pushed her and she fell into the chair. He bent down and put both his hands over the armrest. “Look, chances are we are not going to be murdered in our sleep tonight, but I don’t want to risk it by making that dude hostile. And you know, just between the two of us, I’m the people person.”

“Fine,” she said rolling her eyes, in a way that told him it wasn’t fine at all, not even one bit.

When he was sure she would not start anything, Jaime buttoned up his jacket and leaned against the counter. He flashed the clerk half a grin, and knocked down on the wooden surface. The man seemed alright - shabby if anything, but hardly a criminal. Jaime blamed his rich boy prejudice for thinking anything below their wealth might be dangerous.

“A room for the night,” he said. “Just the one night.”

“Not many people stay longer than that,” the man behind the counter said with a chuckle, then he returned Jaime’s look, expecting some sort of camaraderie.

Jaime simply stared at him.

“Alright,” he continued when it was clear whatever he was expecting, he would not get from Jaime. He turned and looked at the keys hanging off the wall. Even though most of the keys were there save for two or three empty nails, the clerk made a huge deal of choosing a room. Jaime tapped his finger insistently on the counter. “There you go,” he said at last, picking up one key from the top left corner. “Room sixteen. It’ll cost you fifty dollars, just the night.” Jaime saw him steal a glance of Cersei, then he snickered. “Where are you from? We don’t see them like that around here.”

Jaime blinked. “What?” Then realization hit him, and he was very glad Cersei was not listening. “She’s not a prostitute, she’s my sister,” he explained in a whisper, unbelieving.

The other man stood up straighter, losing all the bravado. “Forgive me,” he said, “but when you’re used to a certain type of client, you put two and two together.” He made to put the key back in its place, talking to himself now.

“Excuse me, what are you doing?” Jaime asked, starting to lose his patience. He was feeling tired, and he wanted nothing more than a shower, a sandwich, a glass of scotch and a few hours of sleep.

“Giving you a twin room,” the man said. “This one has a king bed.”

“Oh just give me that,” Jaime snatched the key from his hand and put it in his pocket. Once more he grabbed his wallet and took out a hundred dollar bill, sliding it over to the man’s end of the counter. “Is it possible to have dinner delivered to the room? I know chances of room service are slim, but could you make it happen somehow? Magic, time travel, I don’t care, can you do it?” The man glanced down at the money but he grimaced and began chattering about how difficult it might be. Jaime got the message, and took another hundred from his wallet, pinning it on top of the other. “Can you?”

“There’s a cafè down the road, I’ll call them up.”

Jaime exhaled loudly. “Thank you. Now that wasn’t so hard.”

“You know, my sister and I used to share a room when we were small.” Jaime was about to leave but the man’s words seemed to get his interest - or was it concern? Could he have dared too much? “Our parents couldn’t afford a three-rooms apartment, so we had to make do with two. We slept in the same bed too. It was a small bed. I didn’t really mind, I liked my sister. Then we grew up and we just had to get separate beds, but we still kept the same room. Then she got married, had three kids, and went to live with her husband. I still live in that old house, and I still sleep in that old room.”

Jaime almost smiled at that. But instead he found himself talking before he could stop. “Mine liked to sleep with the lights on. Mind you, we had two different bedrooms, and huge too. It was never a matter of space. She just preferred it when I was there. I think she didn’t feel safe without me.” He paused, remembering those nights. Then, pulling himself out of his reminiscences, he added, “Do you still see your sister?”

The man smiled sadly, and Jaime knew he had hit a nerve. He just didn’t know which one, or how deep it ran, until the clerk told him. “She died three years ago. But I think about her every day.”

All of Jaime’s arrogance could nothing against those words. Silently, he nodded and turned to Cersei, who was now looking in their direction with a questioning stare. He motioned for her to stand up and follow him, and she dropped the magazine she’d been looking at. They crossed the lot without exchanging a word; the man’s words seemed to fill his ears still, and a searing sense of loss settled in the pit of Jaime’s stomach. When they reached the door of room sixteen he dangled the keys from his index.

“I don’t think I’m vaccinated against whatever is in there,” Cersei said, scrunching up her nose.

“Will you shut up?” he said, thrusting the key into the hole and turning it until the door clicked. He opened the door for her, and she walked in, not without a last resentful glance.

* * *

 

The room was certainly small, and the awful shade of dead green on the walls didn't help much in making it appealing. Jaime supposed it might have been alright for someone with less pretenses, but they were not that someone. The furniture was scarce: a king bed with a duvet in floral patterns, a small dresser with an old television on it, two armchairs and a coffee table. The moquette had a few cigarette burns here and there, but overall it seemed clean. Amused, he wondered if he could convince Cersei to actually sleep in there, or if she would rather spend the night standing in the middle of the room, terrified to touch anything.

Again, she wasn't really talking to him. That had been a leitmotif of their trip, and he'd moved past concern; she was impossible, a child prey to her own tantrums, and nothing he would say or do would sway her in any direction unless she wanted to.

She had dropped her bag down on the coffee table and walked right past him, shockingly sitting down on the right side of the bed. He had not seen the telephone on the nightstand. She began pushing keys angrily; Jaime watched her until he heard her say, "Dad you will not believe what I am about to tell you." He didn't really want to listen to an hour's worth more of complaining and then to the two of them fighting about Joffrey again.

"I'm going to have a shower," he announced, opening the door in the far corner, leaving her to her lost battles. _They are not mine to fight_.

Tha bathroom did not exceed his expectations, neither bad nor good. It was the most ordinary bathroom he had ever seen in his entire life; no large tub, no elegant marble on the floor, no multiple faucets. The same moquette from the bedroom slipped under the door and covered the cold tiles of this room as well. There was a toilet, a shower that covered the length of the left wall, some towels folded neatly on the top shelf on the right. He didn't trust any of this, but he could not stand his clothes a second longer.

As he peeled off every layer, he thought of Richfield, and the certainly more comfortable accomodation their father had arranged for the two of them. He thought of clean sheets and the smell of freshly-washed towels, elegant curtains at the windows, breakfast delivered in silver trays and cable television. When he stepped into the shower he paused to wonder if Cersei was right: he might get hepatitis out of this.

"Christ," he murmured, sliding the partition closed and letting the water run for a few seconds until it reached a bearable lukewarm temperature. He stepped under the jet and let the water run down his face, rubbing the exhaustion off his eyes.

The more he tried to shut down his brain, the more thoughts seemed to pile up, concern for Cersei's growing paranoia being the first and source of most concern. He had never seen her quite like this: the idea of losing her son to their father's whims terrified and angered her at the same time. She had become distrusting even with him, Jaime, whom she had always counted on. He felt a distance, and no matter how many times he tried to close that gap it backfired with dreadful results. If only he could bring himself to care about the boy in the least he might be more helpful, but as of now he supported his father's theory that Joffrey needed some stern education. Jaime wanted to but the truth was he couldn't help her.

The water was hotter and hotter by the minute. Jaime placed his hands against the cold tiles, leaning heavily on his arms. His head hung low as the scalding water ran down his neck and back, washing away all of the frustration, leaving nothing but reddened skin. He could step away but instead he didn't move, relishing in the cleansing sensation.

Then he heard her before he could see her. Unflinching when the partition slid open and closed behind him, he closed his eyes instead, focusing on the small splashing noises of her naked feet. Her hands came to rest on his sides, and he could feel her fingernails grazing the skin that stretched over his hipbones. Her touch burned more than the water did. Her body pressed flush against his, she kissed between his shoulder blades.

"Is this an apology?" he asked, eyes fixed on his own feet. His hands were clenched in fists against the wall, and his breathing was just a tad heavier in her presence. He was inhaling her, again.

"A truce."

Her voice sounded softer, like velvet that caressed his ears. Loaded with promises and threats, but reassuring in a way only her voice could be to him. And with her voice her hands, holding him steady in his place without doing anything, just resting there at his sides, pressing him back against her naked form, all of it. All of him against all of her.

"Are you mad at me?" Cersei asked. She bit down his spine, and her arms circled his waist like treacherous vines that wanted to swallow him whole. He had not realized just how hard he was until her slender fingers grabbed his cock. It was painful. It was heavenly.

"You can be such a fucking bitch sometimes," he hissed when she stroked him. His knuckles were white, as white as the tile he felt like punching.

She gripped his length tighter and he grunted.

"I wouldn't use those words if I were you." she said. "I hold you by the balls, quite literally."

His hips met her ministrations, bucking with every long stroke she was torturing him with. Jaime wanted her to stop and Jaime wanted her to finish what she had started, faster, harder. But more importantly, Jaime wanted _her_.

"Are you mad at me?" she murmured again, brushing her thumb against the tip of his cock, making him groan loud enough that the running water was not enough to drown the noise. The warmth of her body against his back was maddening, knowing she was there, right there, but that would be giving in. She wanted him to say no out of personal satisfaction, high on the power and that hold she knew she had over him.

"What do you want?" he said instead. He flexed his arms and pushed himself off the wall, turning in her embrace. He stood only inches shorter than him, but his shoulders were larger; that close, she looked so much smaller, almost fragile. Until you looked in her eyes and saw the danger in her. Jaime didn't even have to touch her; he backed her up against the next wall, and it felt like tables turned.

He touched her face, leaving a wet trail on her cheeks, and for a short moment it looked like tears. But the fire in her erased any thought of that, and she went on tiptoes and kissed along his jaw, small and chaste, with both hands around his neck, pulling him down to her. He was victim to her kisses, unmoving, with his eyes closed and his hands at his sides; he willed himself still, willed himself to make her ask for it, for once. His body betrayed him. When he heard her chuckle against his neck he knew he had lost; he grabbed her by her shoulders and pushed her flat against the wall, breathing harder. Her eyes widened and she whimpered at the contact with the cold. He kissed her, long and hungry, and angry; his hands, with a volition of their own, tried to grab as much of her as he could, pressing his fingers into her bare flesh and hoping to leave a mark that would remind her in the morning, that she was his and he was hers.

As if they needed reminding.

And starved as he was, her body felt like a blessing. He ran his hands up her arms, kissed the hollow spaces above her collarbones and her sighing was music to his ears. He circled her waist with his right arm and pulled her lower body into him, his cock pressed between their stomachs, and she ground against him. Her fingers in his hair felt like roots taking space within his brain, getting rid of every other coherent thought that wasn’t her. His sister called his name and he called hers, acknowledging their sins and welcoming them back into their souls. Black.

Her body curved to fit with his; he lifted her leg up to his hip and held it there, pressed against his side, opening her to him. With her lips at his ear, he heard her moan his name when he entered her, and that was Cersei alright: thirsty and grateful for every bit of him that filled her up and made her - made them - one. Thrust after thrust, his grip grew more vicious and almost desperate, and the praise that took the shape of Cersei’s back arching into him made him feel all the man he was born to be. Purpose and propriety, and all the bad that they knew they were, all the rotten they were drenched in.

Water and sweat mixed on his back and on her forehead, and she glistened under the neon light of a shitty motel room in the middle of Utah, but she was still Aphrodite, and she made him the weakest man to ever live, and the strongest too. On his knees, he would be killed by her, or kill her just as well. For him. For her.

Her inner muscles clenched around him, a warning: she was right there with him, when his own release came, with less of a rhythm but more force, both slaves to the momentum and losing all composure when they came into each other, mouths sealed and hands joined above her head, squeezing the force out of each other’s ends. Behind his eyelids, he could still see her, head thrown back and lips parted, breathing out his name in a litany.

When reason slipped back into him, he opened his eyes to see her in the aftermath, and what he saw in the light green that looked back at him was enough to erase everything around him. There was her, and nothing else.

 

* * *

 

The grease monkey had kept his word: their car was in the parking lot when they woke up the following morning without a scratch. Jaime had given the man another two hundred dollars for good measure, but he had refused, telling him what he had given him the previous day was more than enough. Jaime was taken aback, greed was something he knew all too well, and to see someone as humble was unknown territory. The clerk at the counter had waved them goodbye enthusiastically, much to Jaime’s discomfort once again. They reached the highway around 9am, deciding they wouldn’t chance their luck once again; plus, Ramsay Bolton was waiting, and Tywin had already rung him twice to be informed on their progress.

Jaime would have liked nothing more than to waste another few hours if anything, because as annoying as she was, Cersei seemed to have kicked her boundaries away for the moment. When she had woken up early that morning, she had stretched leisurely and smiled at him. He would do anything to have that daily, have her without everything that came with their life.

“We could never go back to Los Angeles,” he had told her.

“No, we couldn’t,” had been her reply. There was melancholy in her voice, like she was running from something that she knew would inevitably catch up with her. A monster out for them, for their blood and freedom, a monster that would never let them be. Sorrow and obligations everywhere they looked, Jaime and Cersei both knew it was impossible, but he would let himself dream of it for just a while longer. If he didn’t think of the journey back he could hold on to the delusional, wishful thinking: as long as they were in that car, they did not have to be Lannisters.

They could be anything they wanted to be.

They stopped to get milkshakes in Richfield, driving by the small hotel their father had planned for them to stay in before conditions had taken them elsewhere. From outside, it didn’t look much, and Jaime had shrugged it off. Eventually, that awful motel had been alright. They had brought them dinner around 11pm, and they had eaten chips on the duvet, naked, watching television until they had both fallen asleep. Cersei had been in his arms when he’d closed his eyes, and that was exactly where he had found her in the morning. No fear of being caught, no late night strolls down the corridor to avoid nosy housemaids. No hands covering their mouth at the moment of their climaxes to conceal their sounds because no one could hear them there. How ironic that he would be so fond of a few hours spent in a low-budget motel room.

They crossed the state line around noon, and that was when dread started clouding their heads; he felt it, because her face had grown concerned, and her laugh no longer filled the vehicle. Nor did his. She was silent, deep in thoughts; Jaime would have given anything to know what was going on that head of hers, but a safe guess suggested she would be thinking about the same things that worried him. The idea of home, after that brief interlude of peace, was like water in their lungs; even the big mansion that they had always called home felt more and more like a prison, and it paled by comparison. What crushed him to the ground, though, was how inevitable it was. No matter how many times he said they could flee, he knew they couldn’t, and that was enough to drown them both. It was knowledge of being destined to their golden shackles forever, of seeing the keys dangling before them and knowing they could never reach them.

He read a familiar sign and made up his mind without a word. Once again like before, he exited the highway, driving down a narrow street, surrounded by trees on all sides.

“What are you doing?” she asked, without the pugnacious spirit that was there the day before.

“Wait and see.”

“We’re going to be late,” she retorted, covering her eyes with her hand, leaning her elbow against the edge of the car door. The wind breezed through her hair. “We’ll never hear the end of it from father.”

“I don’t care,” Jaime said at that, , which elicited a pained groan from his sister. She would be grateful in a few minutes, he knew for sure.

After a turn, a bay opened before them, vast and beautiful. The sun reflected on the surface of Lake Dillon, in the Dillon Reservoir, all around it green trees and green lawn. Small groups of buildings slept on the shore here and there, and the docks were filled with small motorboats, ideal for fishing. In the distance, the white snowy tops of Swan Mountain. Following his memory, he took a turn left, than right and right again, leaving the asphalt for a bumpier one. They drove further into the woods, closer to the lake, until they trees opened up to show a clearing. Here, Jaime halted and killed the engine.

“Does Joffrey use this car?” he asked.

“I think so, sometimes. Why?” Cersei was perplexed, but her lips were playing with the ghost of a smile.

Jaime got out of the car and walked back to the trunk, pulling it open. He found a white sheet folded in the corner, hidden beneath useless junk; _boys will be boys_ , he told himself, remembering how he had a sheet in the trunk of his car when he was a teenager too, a desperate attempt at shielding the expensive leather from cigarette burns and… other things.. He picked that up and pushed the hood back down with force. He walked up to Cersei’s side of the car and opened the door for her, offering his hand. She was hesitant, but took it all the same, and followed him into the trees. As they walked, she tried to step over logs and rocks, cursing when her heels sank into the fresh earth. Jaime held her hand throughout the walk, pointing at things on their way; he remembered coming down to the lake a few times before, when he was in his teens, those memories were dear to him.

Finally, the trees cleared, and they found themselves on the lakeshore. A bird chirped above their heads, flying to the next taller branch, disturbed by their presence. Beneath their feet nothing but green grass that let room for wet mud where the water touched the shore. Jaime rolled out the sheet and put it down on the ground, crouching down and patting on it.

“Sit.”

“Come _on_.”

“I said sit.”

And so she did, and Jaime beside her. She kicked her shoes off and folded her legs under her, leaning on her arm; Jaime lay down on his side, spooning her, propping his head on his hand.  They both looked at the lake for a few moments, in silence; then Cersei fell back, resting her head onto his stomach. He watched her as she stared up at the sky.

“How do you know this place?” she asked, craning her neck to look at him.

Jaime smiled. “Uncle Gerion brought me up here to fish a few times.”

“Why wasn’t I invited?”

“Because you’re not a boy.”

Cersei rolled on her side, which made it easier for her to look at him, and easier for him to have a good view of her features. The sun shone on the side of her face, a few strands of blond hair falling into her hair.

“Why did you bring me here?”

“I wanted to see you smile one more time, before we have to go back.”

Cersei slid her hand across the sheet and grabbed his hand. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.

And smile she did.

* * *

 

**EPILOGUE**

The sky in Denver was clear, and the buildings reflected the sunlight obnoxiously. After hours of uninterrupted nature, Jaime found the concrete almost offending to his eyes. Cersei had insisted they stopped at a store so that she could get a new phone to replace the one Jaime had tossed out the speeding car. When he had seen her with the small device in her hands, he had known they were back to reality.

Denver didn’t differ much from Los Angeles after all. Tall buildings (though not quite as tall) on the sides of large streets (though not as large) plagued by traffic (though not quite as intense). The people wore suits and ties, some others a more casual outfit, but it was still not at all like anything he had seen in the past twenty-four hours. He knew he should be glad, but he couldn’t help feeling a certain loss.

He halted at a red light, underneath a building where the great sign of the Stark Group of Companies towered the rest of the city. The knot in his stomach was unbearable, and when he glanced at Cersei he saw the same discomfort. They were in enemy territory, carrying hostile and treacherous news. When the red light turned green, Jaime drove past; with their face, they would be noticed if they had walked into the Stark’s stronghold. Bolton had arranged the meeting elsewhere, in his own mansion.

It was an old villa, not far away from the company, but far enough from downtown that they might go unnoticed. When they arrived, the gates opened before them and they drove up the uphill driveway. They halted in the courtyard, where a man was telling them they could go no further, and would have to proceed to the main house on foot.

They took a deep breath and looked at each other. It was ominous at best, and slightly outrageous to Cersei especially. She muttered about respect and, ‘Do they know who we are?” but Jaime didn’t feel like getting into an argument with the Boltons. He did as he was told, parking the car right beside a red BMW that he wagered belonged to the Bolton household.

“This is it,” he said, looking into the rearview mirror. He studied the man that was waiting for them, examining how large his shoulders were and just how much it would take him to tackle him if necessary.

“Jaime,” she said suddenly, putting her hand over his. “Wait.” He waited, expecting a dump of concerns. But on her features was etched something else entirely. “I love you. And I loved Dillon Lake. And I loved being with you, even in that disgusting motel room.”

A pause.

“But next time we’re taking a goddamned plane.”

 


End file.
